Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Open to more than one interpretation: an ambiguous reply.
- adj. Doubtful or uncertain: "The theatrical status of her frequently derided but constantly revived plays remained ambiguous” ( Frank Rich).
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Of doubtful or uncertain nature; wanting clearness or definiteness; difficult to comprehend or distinguish; indistinct; obscure.
- Of doubtful purport; open to various interpretations; having a double meaning; equivocal.
- Wavering; undecided; hesitating: as, “ambiguous in all their doings,” Milton, Eikono-klastes (1649), p. 239.
- Using obscure or equivocal language.
- Synonyms Equivocal, etc. (see obscure), indeterminate, indefinite, indistinct, not clear, not plain, amphibolous, dubious, vague, enigmatical, dark, blind.
Wiktionary
- adj. Open to multiple interpretations.
- adj. Vague and unclear.
- adj. Of persons: hesitant; uncertain; not taking sides.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Doubtful or uncertain, particularly in respect to signification; capable of being understood in either of two or more possible senses; equivocal.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. open to two or more interpretations; or of uncertain nature or significance; or (often) intended to mislead
- adj. having no intrinsic or objective meaning; not organized in conventional patterns
- adj. having more than one possible meaning
Etymologies
- From Latin ambiguus ("moving from side to side, of doubtful nature"), from ambigere ("to go about, wander, doubt"), from ambi- ("around, about, on both sides") + agere ("to drive, move"). (Wiktionary)
- From Latin ambiguus, uncertain, from ambigere, to go about : amb-, ambi-, around; see ambi- + agere, to drive; see ag- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Chapter, and is when we speake or write doubtfully and that the sence may be taken two wayes, such ambiguous termes they call _Amphibologia_, we call it the _ambiguous_, or figure of sence incertaine, as if one should say _Thomas Tayler_ saw _William Tyler_ dronke, it is indifferent to thinke either th'one or th'other dronke.”
“˜ambiguous™ and that the Arabic philosophers, starting with Alfarabi, made being said in a prior and a posterior sense the main characteristic of all ambiguous terms.”
“I think someone previously used the word ambiguous, that is absolutely spot on what he wanted.”
Telegraph.co.uk - Telegraph online, Daily Telegraph, Sunday Telegraph
“When a death requires a presumption, it's loved ones who can become adrift, says therapist Pauline Boss, author of two books on what she calls ambiguous loss.”
Wired: Inside the High Tech Hunt for a Missing Silicon Valley Legend
“In a state where coal is seen as the fount of prosperity, Mr. Raese has seized on what he calls ambiguous statements by Mr. Manchin on proposals for a cap-and-trade system to reduce greenhouse gases.”
“Leaving the boundary between human life and nature ambiguous is a Japanese virtue.”
“The person who needs to stop being ambiguous is you.”
The Volokh Conspiracy » Andrew McCarthy Sticks to His Guns (And He May Be Pointing Them at You Next)
“The decision makers cannot be bothered to learn the technology, and at various levels they express their desires in ambiguous terms that are unrelated to the system design.”
The Volokh Conspiracy » Interesting “Unauthorized Access” Case
“The violent incident is presented in ambiguous, deliberately confused flashbacks and is both comic and disturbing.”
The Guardian: Britain's best film directors show some early promise
“More ambiguous is the view from the other side of the "brane" which verifies the father's lifelong quest, but simultaneously seems detached from the central theme.”
REVIEW: The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Volume 3 edited by George Mann
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘ambiguous’.
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GRE 2014
abate, abdicate, abase, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abjure, abortive, abound, abrasive, abreast, abridge and 1577 more...
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@vcb.etym.prjct - SAT WORD DUMP - as ...
The words on this list SAT regulars that I haven't sorted and grouped yet. It's like my wordy holding pen. get it? holding the pen to write a word? HA! I love how lame my humor is.
iconoclast, glacial, agnostic, histrionic, treacly, contemptuous, captious, bombastic, bombast, perfidy, quiescence, sordid and 148 more...
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SCIE - natural language processing
parsing, tagging, computational lin..., computer science, language processing, machine learning, natural language ..., semantic level, word sense ambiguity, discourse level, anaphora, ambiguity and 332 more...
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EN - academic vocabulary
Use these and get promoted
abandon, abandonment, abnormally, abstract, abstraction, abstractly, abstracts, academia, academic, academically, academics, academies and 3119 more...
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Romanticism
Words to describe art of the Romantic Era
contorted, confusing, rebellious, puzzling, passion, bizarre, tortured, bruisy, emotion, brooding, dark, fantasy and 91 more...
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GRE Barron's 800
zealot, wistful, welter, wary, whimsical, warranted, vortex, vivisection, volatile, vitiate, viscous, visage and 787 more...
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gre
municipal, whit, dissembler, berate, liberally, embellish, dissimilitude, histrionics, flamboyance, bombastic, bovine, calumny and 142 more...
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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Genes
Interesting gene names. Some of these may have changed recently (to something less offensive/funny).
http://www.genenames.org/
tinman, agnostic, dreadlocks, Van Gogh, fruitless, lava lamp, ariadne, cheap date, ken and barbie, I'm not dead yet, I'm not dead yet 2, manic fringe and 1192 more... -
Linguistic Terms
Words that (mostly) only linguists know.
arpabet, protologism, diacritic, macron, macaronic, capitonym, grapheme, boustrophedon, allograph, analphabetic, idiomatic, portmanteau and 40 more...
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Fun to Say
Oh-so-pronounceable words.
schwa, sprack, rubbly, swashbuckler, hecka, tartine, ambiguous, ghee, trapped in, abecedarius, highfalutin, dirigible and 24 more...
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big book gre
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 6689 more...
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gre2
aberrant, aberration, aboveboard, abrasive, abstemious, acme, admonish, affable, affluent, alacrity, allegory, alleviate and 1824 more...
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magoosh1
aberration, aboveboard, abysmal, ace, affable, aghast, alacrity, ambiguous, ambivalent, ameliorate, amenable, amiable and 205 more...
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to memorize
words i need to memorize
aberrant, abscond, advocate, aggrandize, amalgamate, ambiguous, ambrosial, anomalous, antediluvian, antipathy, arbitrate, assuage and 163 more...
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5000 FREE SAT Words
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 229 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for ambiguous.
reesetee At least four of which use the word itself.... Aug 4, 2008
bilby It's just like WeirdNET to have 14 definitions for this word. Aug 3, 2008